Dark Energy

So for those who don’t have time to read a long essay type science article, here are some highlights:

Having been impelled apart by the force of the Big Bang, the galaxies, in defiance of cosmic gravity, are picking up speed on a dash toward eternity.

Although cosmologists have adopted a cute name, dark energy, for whatever is driving this apparently antigravitational behavior on the part of the universe, nobody claims to understand why it is happening, or its implications for the future of the universe and of the life within it, despite thousands of learned papers, scores of conferences and millions of dollars’ worth of telescope time. It has led some cosmologists to the verge of abandoning their fondest dream: a theory that can account for the universe and everything about it in a single breath.

This fall, NASA and the Department of Energy plan to invite proposals for a $600 million satellite mission devoted to dark energy.

Astronomers have developed a smorgasbord of other ways of tracking the effect of dark energy. They have learned how to map the growth of clusters of galaxies, by analyzing how their gravity distorts the light from galaxies far behind them. Gravity makes the clusters grow; dark energy holds them back.

Michael Turner, a University of Chicago cosmologist who coined the term “dark energy,” said you could measure the health of a field by the big questions it takes on, and addressing Dr. Morse of NASA, who was moderating the discussion, as well as his colleagues, he said, “You have a job, to go knock on everyone’s door and say this is the opportunity of a lifetime.”